# Consciousness as a Functor

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.17561 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.17561/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 12 of its 77 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 25 Aug 2025.

## Builds on (most cited first, 12 of 12)

- [UMAP: Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection for Dimension Reduction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1802.03426/) (2018)
- [The Consciousness Prior](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.08568/) (2017)
- [A synthetic approach to Markov kernels, conditional independence and theorems on sufficient statistics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1908.07021/) (2019)
- [Disintegration and Bayesian Inversion via String Diagrams](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1709.00322/) (2017)
- [An enriched category theory of language: from syntax to semantics](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.07890/) (2021)
- [A Theory of Consciousness from a Theoretical Computer Science Perspective: Insights from the Conscious Turing Machine](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2107.13704/) (2021)
- [The d-separation criterion in Categorical Probability](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2207.05740/) (2022)
- [A Theoretical Computer Science Perspective on Consciousness](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2011.09850/) (2020)
- [Universal Decision Models](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2110.15431/) (2021)
- [Incremental constraint projection methods for monotone stochastic variational inequalities](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1703.00272/) (2017)
- [Universal Imitation Games](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2405.01540/) (2024)
- [Universal Reinforcement Learning in Coalgebras: Asynchronous Stochastic Computation via Conduction](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2508.15128/) (2025)

## Abstract (arXiv)

We propose a novel theory of consciousness as a functor (CF) that receives and transmits contents from unconscious memory into conscious memory. Our CF framework can be seen as a categorial formulation of the Global Workspace Theory proposed by Baars. CF models the ensemble of unconscious processes as a topos category of coalgebras. The internal language of thought in CF is defined as a Multi-modal Universal Mitchell-Benabou Language Embedding (MUMBLE). We model the transmission of information from conscious short-term working memory to long-term unconscious memory using our recently proposed Universal Reinforcement Learning (URL) framework. To model the transmission of information from unconscious long-term memory into resource-constrained short-term memory, we propose a network economic model.